BrightDrop EV600 Van
Source: BrightDrop
Detroit – General Motors It is cutting production of all electricity Brightdrop delivery vans at its Canadian plants, and will idle the facility throughout most of 2025, the company confirmed Friday.
The CAMI assembly plant in Ingersol, Ontario, will be cut from two shifts to one shift (eliminating 500 jobs) after starting around 20 weeks from May to October, the company said. The factory’s battery pack assembly will also drop as early as the week of April 21 and April 28, ahead of the long-term closure, GM said.
The Detroit automaker said the decision was not related to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“This adjustment is directly related to meeting market demand and rebalancing inventory,” GM said in an email. “Production of Brightdrop and EV battery assemblies remains at Cami.”
President Lana Payne of Canada’s Union Union, who represents plant workers, described the action as “a blow crushed by Ingersol and hundreds of working families in the surrounding area that rely on the plant.”
“General Motors must do everything with its strength to alleviate unemployment during this downturn, and governments at all levels of government must step up to support Canadian auto workers and Canadian-made products,” Payne said in the release.
GM launched Brightdrop as a wholly owned subsidiary in 2021 and folded it into the company’s fleet business in 2023. Then in 2024, I folded the Brightdrop into a Chevrolet brand.
It is parked on March 13, 2025 near the Cami EV assembly of General Motors Brightdrop Units, General Motors, Canada’s first full-scale electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Ingersol, Ontario, Canada.
Carlos Osorio | Reuters
GM had high hopes to create BrightDrop in the automaker’s new, lucrative growth business, but sales and revenue did not meet the company’s initial expectations.
Brightdrop was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2023. Although GM refused to disclose Brightdrop’s revenue, it is very unlikely that the goal will be achieved.
In 2023 and 2024, the automaker sold only about 2,000 electric vans, according to sales reports.
The idling plans come weeks after a Detroit Free Press report said hundreds of Brightdrop cars lined up in storage lots in Flint, Michigan.
Unifor cited Trump’s tariffs, saying that GM “indicates that it is committed to CAMI facilities with its model year upgrade in 2026, but the immediate future remains uncertain, even with less domestic support and access to fair markets.”
“The reality is that the US is creating disruption in the industry. Trump’s myopia tariffs and rejection of EV technology disrupted investments and frozen forecasts of future order,” Payne said. “It creates an opening for China and other foreign automakers to dominate the global EV market, but North American industry is lagging behind.”
Fix: Factory battery pack assembly will drop in the week of April 21st and April 28th. Previous versions of this article were dated incorrectly.
